The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has adjusted its forecast for Ukraine’s wheat exports for the 2024/25 marketing year (MY, July 2024-June 2025) and lowered it by 0.5 million tons to 15.5 million tons, and corn by 1 million tons to 22 million tons.
The updated USDA forecast for February indicates that in 2024/25 MY wheat and corn production in Ukraine will remain at 22.9 mln tonnes and 26.5 mln tonnes, respectively.
At the same time, a slight increase in wheat production and consumption is expected, however, according to USDA, trade volumes and ending stocks will be lower. Accordingly, the forecast for global wheat production was increased by 0.6 million tons to 793.8 million tons, due to increased production in Kazakhstan (+0.6 million tons, to 18.6 million tons) and Argentina (+0.2 million tons, to 17.7 million tons).
Global wheat consumption will also increase by 1.8 mln tonnes to 803.7 mln tonnes due to higher use of feed grains and transitional residues in the EU, Kazakhstan, Thailand and Ukraine.
At the same time, the global wheat trade will decrease by 3 million tons to 209 million tons due to the decline in exports by the EU (-1.0 million tons, to 28.0 million tons), Mexico, Russia (-0.5 million tons, to 45.5 million tons), Turkey and Ukraine (-0.5 million tons, to 15.5 million tons). The largest reduction is expected in China – by 2.5 million tons, to 8.0 million tons, which will be the lowest imports in the last five years, although last year this country was the world’s leading supplier of wheat.
The same picture is expected for the world ending stocks in 2024/25 MY, which, according to the updated forecast, will decrease by 1.3 mln tonnes to 257.6 mln tonnes, due to the reduction in China, partially offset by the increase in stocks in Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
In 2024/25 MY, the global corn market is expected to decline in all indicators. The global corn production is expected to decline by 1.9 mln tonnes to 1 bln 212.5 mln tonnes, mainly due to Argentina (-1.0 mln tonnes, to 50.0 mln tonnes) due to lower yields as a result of heat and Brazil (-1.0 mln tonnes, to 126.0 mln tonnes) and slow sowing.
The main changes in the world corn trade are related to the decrease in the forecasted corn exports from Brazil (-1.0 million tons, to 46.0 million tons), Ukraine (-1.0 million tons, to 22.0 million tons) and South Africa. External ending stocks of corn for 2024/25 MY were reduced by 3 million tons to 290.3 million tons.
